'Hapless toad' case shows how court nominee Roberts thinks...or does it?
This somewhat hysterical column has some good information in it about USSC nominee John Roberts, based on a case decided right after he went to the DC Court of Appeals. But the writer falls for the spin placed on one of Roberts' opinions by environmentalists. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

It's only a "hapless toad,'' in John Roberts' words. But of all the cases in the Supreme Court nominee's career, a dispute over an endangered amphibian in the path of a California homebuilder may provide the best indication of his views on most any major issue likely to come before the court. The July 2003 opinion -- his first after President Bush appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. -- questioned an important legal rationale for the Endangered Species Act. The opinion also suggested that Roberts has a narrow interpretation of the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce, the basis for a wide range of laws... Commentators and advocates on all sides agree that Roberts' opinion stopped short of a definitive statement on either the Endangered Species Act or constitutional limits on federal authority. But Senate Democrats say they plan to make it a focus of Roberts' confirmation hearing.